R.I.P. PC

Acronym-mania in that title, huh?
On Saturday, April 30, Kels and I said goodbye to a longtime friend, our PC. Our relationship was up and down and by no means perfect. In fact, it was mostly a take relationship on our part. We did a terrible job of giving love to her, and, frankly, I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did.

The PC was a Christmas gift from my dad and stepmom in 2003 when I transferred from NIACC to Simpson. Seven and a half years was a pretty good run. Other than upgrading the RAM and getting a flat screen monitor to save desk space, I hadn't spent any money on her.

I've been wanting a new Mac for a while. It seemed like the perfect fit as I delve into the realm of photography and also try to stay on the edge of coolness. (We also have a Macbook that we purchased three years ago. We call her Maxine.)

But, we came to the conclusion a few months ago that we wouldn't buy a new computer until the PC breathed it's last breath. Kels was using it as her main blogging machine and, because of how slow it was running, we were not sure how much time we had left. But we agreed that when it came time to buy a new one, it would be a Mac.

For a full week, we couldn't believe that PC was completely dead, though, so we called in a "doctor" to confirm. Dr. Kyle was a part of the youth group I led for four years, and has now become our IT consultant. He is helping us get our home office set up for maximum blogging/photography efficiency. We basically have no idea what we are doing when it comes to storing files and organizing our hardware, so he is graciously offering his advice on what we need in order to be set up properly.

Back to the funeral of the PC. She was gone. We had recently backed up all our files, so we hadn't lost anything. We moved pretty quickly through the stages of grief as we realized this meant we got to take a trip to the Apple store. It's like a super expensive candy store for me. We thought about another laptop. Or an iPad. I would buy it all if money in fact grew on trees. We decided on the 21.5" iMac.

After two years of hard work and second jobs, we don't have any consumer debt and had enough money saved up for it. This purchase hindered our savings goal for the month, but when you are debt-free this type of thing becomes a minor inconvenience rather than a full-blown financial disaster. Thanks, Dave Ramsey!

We are excited about the new addition to our family. That week when we had to share one laptop while writing two blogs was challenging. (As our friend Chris would say, these are First World problems.) Of course, since we love nicknames, we had to name our new friend, right? We decided on Maverick the iMac (it's a healthy 20-pound boy). My mom says this is not the grandchild she was expecting...

So, who gets to use Maverick? We are going to share him, and I actually haven't even touched it yet. I'm kind of scared. I like familiar and trusty Maxine. Kels is used to the iMac because she has one at work. And, we are discovering that most everything I touch, I break, so I'm nervous...

P.S. Yesterday, three days after we bought Maverick, they came out with a new version of the iMac. We went to the Apple store and they exchanged it for Maverick 2.0, no questions asked. Apple is awesome!